Four Ways to Prepare for the Holiday Shopping Season

Facebook Business

August 15, 2019

It may still be summer, but now is the time to start planning your holiday season strategy in order to be set up for success. And with people starting their holiday shopping earlier than ever, it’s important to be prepared for early-bird shoppers. In fact, according to a Facebook-commissioned Ipsos study, in 2018, nearly half of US shoppers had started shopping for the holidays in November or earlier. “Facebook Global Holiday Study,” Facebook-commissioned online study by Ipsos, Jan 2019. So here are four ways to help you start preparing for the holiday shopping season.

Use signals to build more effective ad campaigns

Signals help you understand how people are interacting with your business both online and in-store. Be sure your Facebook pixel and SDK integrations are set up to understand your audience and their actions and preferences across your website and app. And if you have physical stores, offline conversions will enable you to measure in-store purchases. You can then use these insights to build custom audiences based on shopper signals to create more effective ad campaigns.

Build momentum and your audience

With back-to-school shopping in full swing, the summer can be a great time to grow your customer base and generate brand awareness among new audiences. Your back-to-school campaigns can then be used to help build custom audiences and lookalike audiences for your holiday campaigns. You can also use insights from the summer to remind people about products they’ve browsed on your website or in your mobile app using retargeting with dynamic ads.

Remove friction from the shopping journey

Today, consumers have increased expectations and demands for speed and ease in the shopping process, so your ability to provide a seamless experience will help you compete for today’s mobile-first consumers. Friction refers to a range of delays and inconveniences that can cause people to abandon their shopping journey before completing a purchase. The cost of friction to businesses is huge - it’s projected to be $213 billion in the US alone. 40 cart abandonment rate statistics, Baymard Institute, Jun 2018 and Retail ecommerce sales, US 2018-2022, eMarketer, Oct 2018 So this holiday season, focus on eliminating friction points in order to maximize results. Make it easy for people to find information about your offerings, shorten the path to purchase and let people convert where they want--whether that’s on mobile or in-store. Check out to learn how you can create a seamless shopping experience for your customers.

Get help from a Facebook Marketing Partner

Facebook Marketing Partners can be an extra set of hands to help you with anything from managing holiday campaigns at scale, to developing mobile-first creative that captures attention or integrating offline conversions so that you can drive sales both online and in store. Team up with the partners that best suit your business needs and discover the impact it can have on your holiday campaign results.

Get more insights and tips to build a successful holiday strategy.

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